Way of the Roses with children?

[crisscross]

We are new to c2c and pretty pedestrain cyclists - but we like a challenge!

We'd like to tackle coast to coast and wondered which route to attempt.

We live in Lancashire so the Way of the Roses Morecambe to Bridlington route appeals but we aren't sure if that is hillier/ harder than the Hadrians Wall route?

We will be doing it as a family with our 2 children aged 10 and 8 so we will probably take 4 or 5 days - 30 to 40 milers.

It goes without saying that the children are far fitter than I am!

 

[Bigsharn]

Don't go anywhere near the A166 at the moment, the big freeze has left it worse for wear to say the least (There are mile long stretches of road with no surface, and a pothole at most every 200yds after Fridaythorpe).

The way of the roses is a nice route, just try to find another way to Bridlington, or divert to Scarborough

 

[User10119]

I rode most of a coast to coast, in the other direction from York to Barrow last year with my (then) 8 year old. You can read his version of events on his blog http://zakonnabike.edublogs.org/ or mine at http://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=37185.0 It was his (and my) first attempt at a tour. We're hoping for another this summer

He's very proud of having made it and, with the exception of the truly epic weather through the dales on the third day, had a great time. My recommendations would be to get them put riding plenty ASAP - we started practising at Easter for a trip in August. He started at 18 miles, and found that hard, and worked up to a 50 mile day in July. This was further than I expected to go in any one day, but it meant that after 30-odd miles of riding in the dales I could honestly day to him "but we KNOW you can ride further than this - you managed 50 miles!". We also did a lot of practising junctions and roundabouts etc, and a bit of deliberately riding on busier local roads - I needed to be sure that he understood what to do so that he wouldn't find it impossible on unfamiliar roads.

I also did nearly all the route, as a couple of day rides, on my own before riding it with him. That may be more a reflection of my faith in my own navigational skills than anything else though. It did mean that I had one of the most utterly blissful days riding ever from Arnside to Garsdale....

 

[Langsett]

It is a great route, and although you haven't said when you are doing it I don't think it is imminent so hopefully the potholes will have been mended?

 

[crisscross]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I replied but seem to have killed my own post. Maybe it was quality control at work!

Langsett - you are dead right - the potholes will be / should have /may have / won't have ( delete as appropriate) fixed by the time we do the ride.

CrinkyLion - fantastic blogs, I will study them again thanks. I remember seeing the thread last year and being impressed but didn't realise you were doing a similar route.

We did a charity ride last year with the kids on nasty eBay mountain bikes, now they've got Islas (courtesy of CC Classifieds) they'll probably leave us standing this time.

 

[User10119]

crisscross - we didn't do an 'official' route, because it suited us better to not. It was a nice route though, although the road through Hawes and Garsdale to Sedbergh isn't exactly the easiest and I wouldn't have taken the cub that way on a weekend, when the motorbikes are out in force. Adding a couple of train legs worked really well for us - I picked Bedale to Redmire because it took some hills out of the equation (and is a fabulous train journey!) and Arnside to Ulverston because I couldn't find a route down to Barrow that didn't involve either a big detour or some really nasty roads. 35+ miles with added hills on the second day was at the limit of what he could do with panniers on, and the 27annabit miles into the headwind and rain on the Friday was really testing stuff. He's really proud of what he achieved. There is talk of a tour down south, possibly at Easter, heading towards Hertford.... but since he hasn't done more than the school run since November he's need to get some miles in his legs first!

Edit to add...
one thing to do (worked for us anyway) in the build up is to make sure that, as well as a couple of day rides far in excess of what they'll need to do on tour, you get a couple of back to back days of riding in. The cub discovered that it's very different going out and doing 40 miles to doing 35 and then getting up the following day and doing it again! I also made it a condition of him going that he had to get his moving average consistently over 8mph on a day ride (his target is 1mph per year of his age - so I should be able to keep up for a couple more years!) which meant that even slowed down by hills and luggage we managed to keep it over 7mph apart from the really gruesome weather day - a speed that he couldn't maintain for more than 10 miles completely unladen when he started training at Easter. It wasn't the slightest bit important for us to get there fast - as you might notice, given the amount of tea, picnic and park stops we made - but the difference in the amount of time in the saddle at 5 or 6mph and at 8mph is significant!

 

[crisscross]

Hi C-L

Don't know what keeps happening to my replies but they seem to disappear.

The children would love the idea of the train hop but I'm not sure if they would want to get off again!

A friend of mine who did it in 2 days says that the hardest bit was up the hilll before and then uphill agin out of Settle, so we'll have a look at that carefully and see if we are up to it.

I knwo what you mean about consecutive days riding, we managed London - Paris which was further but flatter and we had a few days off in the middle to watch the filming of Merlin.

I love the idea of age = mph, if that were true I may well beat the land speed record.

Georgia is a good 12-15mph ( on a normal runwithout hills) whereas Jack is probably 8-10, so your calculations may be pretty close.

My friend wass describing all his pub stops - we are more concerned about availability of play areas, rope swings and ice cream vans!